Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1)

She had forgotten how beautiful it was.

So now: stand still, so still that she became one with the background, that she could feel her heart slowing, five beats becoming four, becoming three, until there was no more than one beat per minute, until she barely had to breathe. Maybe Jack was right; maybe her ability to be still was preternaturally honed. It didn’t feel like anything special. It just felt correct, as if this was what she should have been all the time, always.

Her parents worried because she didn’t eat enough, and maybe that was something they needed to worry about when she was moving like a hot, fast thing, but they didn’t understand. She wasn’t going to stay here, in their hot, fast world. She wasn’t. And when she slowed her body down like this, when she was still, she didn’t need to eat any more than she already did. She could survive for a century on a spoonful of juice, a crumb of cake, and consider herself well-nourished. She didn’t have an eating disorder. She knew what she needed, and what she needed was to be still.

Nancy breathed deeper into her stillness and felt her heart stop for the span of a minute, becoming as motionless as the rest of her, like a pomegranate seed nestled safe at the center of a fruit. She was preparing to take another breath, to let her heart enjoy another beat, when someone stepped around the corner of the house. Nancy would have said that she couldn’t become any more motionless. In that moment, she proved herself wrong. In that moment, she was as still and as inconsequential as stone.

Jill walked past the porch, bloodstains on her hands and a parasol slung over one shoulder, blocking out any errant rays of moonlight that might dare caress her skin. There was a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth, like a spot of jam that her napkin had missed. As Nancy watched, motionless, Jill’s little pink tongue flicked out and wiped the blood away. Jill kept walking. Nancy didn’t move.

Please, she thought. Please, my Lord, keep my heart from beating. Please, don’t let her see me.

Nancy’s heart did not beat.

Jill walked around the far corner of the house and was gone.

Nancy breathed in. Her lungs ached at the invasion of air; her heart protested as it started to pound, going from stillness to a race in under a second. It took a few seconds more for the blood to resume circulating through her body, and then she spun and ran for the house, following the drops of blood on the floor until she reached the heretofore unseen kitchen and burst through the door.

Kade whirled, a carving knife in his hand. Christopher stepped in front of Eleanor. Jack was lying motionless on the butcher’s block in the middle of the room, her shirt cut away and makeshift bandages covering the stab wound in her arm.

“Nancy?” Kade lowered the knife. “What happened?”

“I saw her,” gasped Nancy. “I saw Jill. She did this.”

“Yes,” said Jack wearily. “She did.”





11

YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME

JACK’S EYES WERE OPEN and fixed on the ceiling. Slowly, she used her uninjured arm to push herself upright. When Christopher stepped forward as if to help, she waved him off, muttering an irritated, “I am injured, not an invalid. Some things I must do myself.” He backed away. She finished sitting and held that position for a moment, head bowed, fighting to get her breath back.

No one moved. Finally, Jack said, “I should have seen it sooner. I suppose I did, on some level, but I didn’t want to, so I refused it as best I could. She makes it out like it was my fault we had to leave the Moors, like the work I was doing with Dr. Bleak riled up the villagers. That’s not true. Dr. Bleak and I never killed anyone—not on purpose—and most of the locals left us their bodies when they died, because they knew we could use the bits they’d left behind to save lives. We were doctors. She’s the one who went and became beloved of a monster. She’s the one who wanted to be just. Like. Him.”

“Jack…?” said Kade, warily.

Nancy, who remembered the moonlight glittering off a speck of blood like jam, said nothing.

“She would have made a beautiful monster, if she’d been a little smarter,” said Jack quietly. “She certainly had the appetite for it. Eventually, I suppose she would have learnt subtlety. But she didn’t learn fast enough, and they found out what she was doing, and they took up their torches and they marched, and Dr. Bleak knew she’d never be forgiven. He drugged her. He opened the door and went to throw her through. I couldn’t let her go alone. She’s my sister. I just didn’t know how hard it would be.”

“Sweetheart, what are you saying?” asked Eleanor.

Nancy, who remembered the way Jill had smiled when she talked about her Master, and how far she’d been willing to go to please him, said nothing.

“It’s my sister.” Jack looked at Kade rather than Eleanor, like it was easier for her to say this to a peer. “She killed them all. She’s trying to build herself a key. We have to stop her.” She slid off the butcher block, only wincing a little when the impact of her feet hitting the floor traveled up through her bad arm. “Seraphina is still alive.”

“That’s why Loriel pointed next to you, but not at you,” said Christopher.

Jack nodded. “I didn’t kill her. She knew it. Jill did.”

“I saw her outside,” said Nancy. “She was walking like there was no hurry. Where would she go?”

“She stabbed me in the basement, but she’ll be heading for the attic,” said Jack. She grimaced. “The skylights … it’s easier when there’s a storm. I tried to stop her. I tried.”

“It’s all right,” said Kade. “We’ve got it from here.”

“You’re not going without me,” said Jack. “She’s my sister.”

“Can you keep up?”

Jack’s smile was thin and strained. “Try to stop me.”

Kade glanced to Eleanor, expression questioning. She closed her eyes.

“Jack can keep up, but I can’t,” she said. “Don’t go if you’re not sure that you’ll come back to me.”

They went.

The four students ran through the house, fleet and angry. Jack was surprisingly steady on her feet, given the amount of blood she had lost. Nancy brought up the rear. Stillness and speed were diametrically opposed. But she did the best she could, and they all reached the attic door at roughly the same time. Kade slammed the door open.

Jill was standing in an ocean of books with a knife in her hand. The table she had swept clear was now occupied by Seraphina—the most beautiful girl in the world—and an assortment of jars, each with its own, terrible burden. Jill raised her head as the door opened, and sighed. “Go away,” she said peevishly. “This is delicate work. I don’t have time for you.”